


but i know that i can make it

by rosewitchx



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blatant Plagiarism of The Killers, Blood and Injury, Bombing, Child Soldiers, Chronic Pain, Dave | Technoblade and Wilbur Soot and TommyInnit are Siblings, Dreams and Nightmares, Drowning, Epic Bromance, Execution, Friends to Enemies, Gen, Gratuitious Use of Spanish, Guitars, Homoeroticism, Hybrids, Insane Wilbur Soot, Manberg is an actual country in this, Physical Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prisoner of War, Rescue Missions, Sieges, The Water Rises References, Treason, Villain Wilbur Soot, Violence, War Crimes, Withdrawal, i just miss them so much........., im going there, im gonna tag that just to be safe, in which i cope with existing in a shitty country by hurting big man, loss of hearing, lunch club references, some very.... interesting allegories, these tags are just me listing war crimes, welcome to angst town population me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:27:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27524605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewitchx/pseuds/rosewitchx
Summary: Schlatt laughs. It’s a wet, pained thing, but he laughs. The Emperor is here. The Businessman is here. If Wilbur wants a villain, cornered and pathetic, he’ll have one; hopefully he’ll forget about Quackity for long enough if he’s distracted with Schlatt.“I sent him away,” he tells him, as confidently as he can. “No one will ever find him again.”- or, a boy is a weapon, a friend is a concept, and Schlatt comes to terms with his impending execution.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & Jschlatt, NO SHIPPING I SWEAR ON GOD, i swear they do be platonic, past Jschlatt & Wilbur Soot
Comments: 38
Kudos: 336
Collections: MCYTs Fics





	but i know that i can make it

**Author's Note:**

> title: sam's town - the killers  
> actually give this one a listen. i think it has strong manberg energy. specifically, [the _live from the royal albert hall_ version.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfTGKReroWU)
> 
> do mind the tags. and if i need to tag anything else, please let me know! this one's extremely AU.

“Listen,” Schlatt drawls out. “ _Listen,_ Big Q.” He immediately forgets what he’s about to say.

He’s holding his shitty cobblestone pickaxe within both his hands, leaning against the walls of the White House. Stupid ass building. The remnants of a bottle of whiskey (alongside an eighth of its contents) lay scattered over the carpet. Quackity’s sitting on top of Schlatt’s desk, face carefully guarded. “I’m listening,” he says, but it’s clear that he’s not. His own glass of whiskey isn’t even half empty yet, the ice having long melted since. _Fuck him,_ Schlatt thinks, _wasting perfectly good whiskey._ His whole body aches; his hands itch for the drink. 

“Can I have that?,” he motions towards the glass. 

“I think you’ve had enough, prez.”

“Nah. Nah. Let me have it.”

He reaches for it. Quackity grabs the glass and empties it on the floor. “Fuck’s sake,” Schlatt grumbles. The pickaxe is heavier and heavier in his hands. _Fuck him!_ “Can’t have shit in Detroit!”

“Schlatt, stop, man!” 

“What’s the fuckin’ point! They’re- they’re gonna destroy everything, any moment now! It’s not gonna _matter_ if I drink or not!”

He’s shaking, he knows this, but he doesn’t care. Quackity’s probably the only person he’d let see his rare moments of weakness. And, to his credit, the Vice doesn’t pity him. 

No, Quackity’s better than that. Instead he grounds him, holds him by the hand, sits him down on his chair. “I know it all seems super fucked,” he tells Schlatt. His thumb rubs against his knuckles gently. “But if you’re wasted and they attack, we’re gonna be even _more_ fucked. Our people need you.” And then, after a little hesitation, “ _I_ need you. I can’t do this all alone.”

And they _are_ alone, aren’t they? Now that Tubbo’s gone and betrayed them too. They barely even have Niki and Fundy left (and maybe he’s being paranoid, but he’s _sure_ they’re about to double-cross them, too). Schlatt stares at the broken glass on the floor. He feels very small, out of nowhere, not that he’d ever admit that. 

“I want to tear it down,” he speaks, impulsive, as he always tends to do. His grip on the pickaxe tightens. “The White House. If we break it down, they- they won’t take it from us.”

“That’s not the way to go, babe, and we both know it.”

He knows. Gods, he knows. “We’re running out of time.”

Quackity doesn’t say anything to that.

The country’s small, but their walls are stronger than steel, which is frankly the only thing they’ve got going for themselves right now. If he _has_ to admit to anything, is that Wilbur had the right idea while building them - and Quackity too, by stopping him from tearing them down the second he’d laid eyes on the ugly, brutalist things. 

Those walls are now their only barrier against the enemy. Beyond them, the fields that used to feed a nation are long gone, now barren lands occupied by the invaders, and his people are starting to starve. Their blessing is their doom; they’re running out of food, out of supplies.

Schlatt follows his routine, out the second daylight peeks through the top of the wall, and Quackity follows close by. They help distribute what resources they have amongst the citizens, then check the borders for any damages. At noon, Pogtopia’s army fires at the walls; by one in the afternoon they have reinforced and repaired what they can. It’s not enough. It’s never enough.

A girl asks him for more food for her little brother. A man holds his infected injuries while in line for an ever-scarcer potion of healing. “Mr. President,” they beckon him, with their dirty hands, and he gives back to them with blood under his nails and gives and gives and goes to bed hungry for like, two hours. Everyone does.

Gods, he’s so tired. Everything hurts. He smokes through his last pack of cigarettes in one desperate night and Quackity grimaces at the smell the entire time; he ran out of supplements weeks before that, and he can barely force his own body to function. But he has to keep going.

They work through the night, going over evacuation plans that have no hope of working and attempts at arming their dwindling people. They’ll have to surrender eventually; it’s clear Eret won’t be coming to help, and he’d been told Dream had been seen sparring with Technoblade right outside their gates.

( _If only the boys were here_ , he laments, one night, as he siphons the very last of his vodka directly into his chapped lips. But they are not. They have not been for a long time.)

(Friends. A painful concept. They come and go all the time, sometimes drifting apart, sometimes ripped from him in sudden, unexpected gore.)

(—He still remembers Charlie at the end of the world, and Travis giving him a stray shoelace, and Noah’s strange golden eyes, and it hurts, so badly—)

“Schlatt,” Quackity’s voice breaks through the haze. He blinks at the map of their small country below them and his chest tightens.

“Yeah,” he says. “Sorry.”

Another week goes by like that. By the sixth day, Schlatt has no food left, and he and Quackity share the last loaf of bread they have. 

“I think we have no choice left,” the Vice whispers, as they lay on the floor of their office. Schlatt looks at him. His Vice’s wings are wrapped around them as blankets, since they gave theirs away. And under the waning light of their last candle Schlatt almost misses the heavy bags under his eyes that he knows are mirrored in his own face.

“Tomorrow,” he says. “Tomorrow I’ll do it.”

They both smile then. Genuinely for the first time in about two months; they’ve lost track of the days now, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Finally, a moment of respite. Quackity squeezes his hand and _oh,_ he’s tearing up.

“Listen to me,” Quackity tells him. “No matter what happens. We’re doing this together, okay?”

(A bittersweet concept. The way their hands interlock, the softness of his unpreened wings brushing against his own horns. The unknown awaiting them tomorrow; the most certain of deaths, for at least one of them, if not both.)

His whole being screams in agony. He knows the Vice can tell. He squeezes his hand back. He can barely feel Big Q’s in his grasp. 

“Okay, _guapito,_ ” Schlatt replies, voice strangled. Quackity snorts and scoots closer to him, close enough to feel their hearts beating together. 

“ _Hasta mañana, mi amor._ No homo.”

(He dreams of drowning. He’s swimming towards the surface, but it’s just so far away. Someone’s waiting there for him. Someone wanted him to come. He swims, but the water is oppressing and heavy. He swims, and swims, and kicks, and screams, and—)

“Schlatt!,” someone screams at him, distant. “Wake up, dumbass!”

His eyes open into a bleary darkness. His whole body hurts and he whimpers, his head is pounding, spinning - gods, he needs coffee, it’s too early for this. “I’m up,” he whines, pulling himself up from the rubble into a sitting position despite his body’s protests. 

Quackity’s arms (he thinks, if the soft feathers brushing against him are any indication of) wrap themselves around Schlatt’s body into a tightly-knit hug that he struggles to return in his confusion. He’s about to ask what happened when another explosion rocks the ground, and it is then when Schlatt notices the hole on the ceiling and the wreckage around them. 

“I was so scared,” Quackity’s saying, “you weren’t waking up, I didn’t know what to do.”

“They’re attacking.” Schlatt spends a moment on the ground, gathering his ideas, and once the situation actually hits, he scrambles up, up, stumbling against the pieces of ceiling and desk and chair and glass. _Everything hurts,_ but that’s not _important._ “Fuck, they’re attacking. The shelters—“

“Schlatt, wait—“

And he makes it past the destruction of their office, towards the door, but he still goes back to the floor. And Quackity reaches for him with a pained hiss that finally, _finally,_ makes Schlatt look at the Vice: caked in ash, dust and his own blood, shaking like a leaf, bruised and battered; his left wing, already dirty and sad the night before, had broken in half. 

“Fuck, your wing,” Schlatt says, and crawls back to his friend. “What-”

“A rock fell on top of it,” he tells him. “But it’s okay. We need to get you out of here.”

“No, what? You- hang on, I’ve got a potion. I’ll fix you up.”

“You need to use it yourself, genius!” But Schlatt’s already standing up again. The world spins around him. It’s odd, feeling this dizzy, but he manages to make it to his drawer, somehow still standing, and retrieves the very last potion of healing in the country.

(There’s something damp dripping down his forehead. He’ll deal with it later.)

“Schlatt, come on, let’s do half-and-half,” Quackity’s trying to negotiate. But they don’t call him the most successful businessman ever just for show; he knows a bad deal when he sees it. He goes back to where his friend is as the ground shakes (that was closer, fuck) and he falls down again, but nevermind all that. He unscorks the bottle and pours the shimmering liquid on his partner’s wing. Quackity shivers as it starts taking effect. “You dumb idiot,” he says. “You needed that.”

“I’m fine,” he scoffs in reply. “Let’s get to work.”

“Your horn’s broken, asshole.”

The night is silent, for just the shortest of seconds. Schlatt raises a hand to his horns and flinches at the searing pain that follows; one has the tip chipped off, and the other one got broken right in half. He stares at Quackity and finds him looking right back at him, and he could really use a beer right now.

“It doesn’t matter,” he lies to himself. “Nothing we can do ‘bout ’em right now. We have to go.”

It takes him a while to get used to the weight imbalance, and a bit longer to actually climb his way out of the rubble of the White House. He’s awfully dizzy (a concussion, maybe) and as the adrenaline starts wearing off his horns start pulsating pain through his head, but Quackity keeps him on track. They go to the shelters, running through the streets that have quickly turned into warzones, they hold the girl’s hands as she dies and lead the man to safety, all while avoiding seemingly-endless explosions and the soldiers that are now invading. 

War fucking sucks, man. They have to jump over trees and stone and choke on smoke and gas and they have to stop multiple times because their eyes sting or they can’t breathe or Schlatt can’t feel anything other than complete and utter agony, and the worst part is that if they give up it’s over, so they keep pushing forward, they keep dodging arrows, they keep forcing themselves to help their people, even if they have to ignore the bodies littering the streets.

It is as they’re hiding in an alley, catching their breaths, and the Vice is wrapping up a rabbit-girl’s hand, when Schlatt says, “they won’t stop until I go to them.”

“Don’t say that,” Quackity snaps. The girl runs off, headed to the shelter, and he stands up, affronted. “We said we’d do this together.”

“If we go together they’ll kill both me and your fat ass, babe. And I… I can’t run anymore. Physically. I’m all fucked up. You need to get out of here, take anyone you can.”

“Shut the fuck up, man.” But Schlatt can tell: Quackity knows he’s right. 

“We have no other choice left,” he reminds him. “ _Mi casa es su casa._ ”

“That doesn’t even make sense, dumbass _._ ”

“ _Por ti, guapito._ ”

“There’s nowhere to run, though.”

A new voice breaks through their small chaos and they both snap up at its source. And there stands a blonde boy clad in white and red, hands drenched in soot and mud and blood, gripping a sword so tightly Schlatt thinks it might break. 

End of the line. The quipping falls apart very quickly. 

“Quackity, go,” he says. “Now.”

“Schlatt—“

Tommy approaches, inch by inch. Quackity takes their only defense (an almost-broken iron chestplate) and looks at the President. 

“I’ll come back for you,” he promises. And then he’s sprinting down the alley, away from Tommy and Schlatt, disappearing into the smoke that threatens to consume the city. 

(A painful concept. Friends; they leave you behind, feed you to the wolves, and don’t dare look back at the carnage.

But Quackity had never been like that. He’d been the exception to the rule, the one person that hadn’t stabbed him in the back. The one person he could trust. 

Friends; they tend to your wounds, take care of you, and run only when ordered to.)

And Schlatt doesn’t look to see if he regretted it. 

“What happened to your horn?,” Tommy asks. He’s dragging Schlatt through the city. The sky is clouded with smoke and the dry thunderstorm glows orange. 

“You’re not getting to Big Q,” Schlatt sneers for a reply. The Emperor mask is back on; arrogant, prideful, headstrong. His hands shiver, but he tells himself it’s just the rush of the battle. In truth, he’s exhausted; he can barely hear anything anymore. 

But Tommy just shrugs, ignoring his attempt at a bravado entirely. He knows Schlatt’s cornered; he knows this is it, there’s no point in denying it. “Techno will, probably. Nothing escapes The Blade.”

“Good luck with that, pal.” There’s always been a fire raging behind Tommy’s eyes. Today they burn as bright as the flames swallowing Manberg, almost like he’s high in his own righteous anger. They stand before the gates, now. Once they stood tall between the city and the farmlands; now there’s merely a hole, and the enemy pushes through it into the city. There’s no defense left. Schlatt’s heart aches. “We were going to surrender, you know? Today.”

“That’s a shame,” Tommy says. He doesn’t even look at the bodies. “Gave you a good shot ‘n’ everything.”

“Listen, Big T, just— just stop the attack, that’s all I want. You can do that, can’t you?” He thinks of the pain beating through his head, of the scrapes on his hands from all the times he’s stumbled just this night. He thinks of the men dead in the garrison, in the walls, defending a lost country. He thinks of a girl, a man; he thinks of Fundy and Niki and Quackity. “If anyone fucked this up, it was me, kid.”

“I’m not a kid,” the kid growls, and the anger grows exponentially. 

(A boy is a weapon. A boy fights wars from age thirteen, convinced that he is not being manipulated, and becomes a man, a puppet hanging by a thread. A boy wakes up in the dead of the night, screaming at his ghost injuries.)

Schlatt sighs. “They’re civilians,” he says instead of arguing, seeing no point to it anymore. “They don’t deserve this.”

“Since fucking when do _you_ care?”

“Since they’re my people, Tommy. They were your people too.”

“And you fuckin’ exiled us.”

Yeah, he did. He stops for a moment, nods towards the wreckage behind them, the screams of their country. “And look what happened because of it.”

They stand underneath the place where the gates used to be now. Schlatt can see Wilbur, standing in the distance, and he realizes this is the first time in months (even before the siege) that he’s been outside his country. 

He knows an executioner when he sees it. 

“Tommy, listen,” he pleads, one last time. His body feels like lead. “Do what you want with me, I don’t care anymore. But spare _them_.”

The boy looks at him, _really_ looks. And when the soldiers come to whisk the President away, all rough shoves and victorious insults hurled at him, Tommy doesn’t stop looking. 

The bombs stop dropping, at the very least, so Schlatt considers that a win. Small victories, here and there, you know. He’s not really in a position to complain; he’s just fucking exhausted, that’s all there is to it. He collapses in his cell before he can manage to take a step in.

No one helps him up. He sleeps on the floor, all alone, and the world feels too fucking cold.

(He dreams of Quackity, golden wings drenched in blood, laying lifeless beneath The Blade. They are in the tournament of ages past. Quackity is just one of many; Schlatt will be next. He doesn’t sleep much more after that.)

He wakes twice in that cell; there’s only the smallest window, up by the low ceiling, just a ventilation hole (try not to suffocate, hold your breath as the water flows in), but at least he can tell the passage of time. The first time he opens his eyes and it’s morning and he’s shivering so badly he struggles with sitting up; his lungs hurt like a bitch and his ears haven’t stopped ringing. And his body hurts immensely, too, but it’s become such a constant at this point that he just sucks it up. 

“Hello, Schlatt,” a voice says, quietly. His head turns towards the door of the cell, some haphazardly-placed iron bars, only to see Tubbo just standing there. 

Where Tommy is all seriousness and righteous anger, Tubbo is calculation, premeditation, peaceful resolution. Tubbo is the one looking insecure, now that the siege is over (he swears he’s still choking on smoke). The boy looks at the former president through the bars, like he’s some fucking sort of zoo animal, but if Schlatt dared let himself think differently, he would’ve seen a shadow of doubt cross the boy’s face. Truth be told, he can’t even be mad at his ex-protegé. At the end of the day he was a kid, and so was Tommy. They weren’t to blame.

(And, come on, it’s not like any of them were that much older to begin with, not even Schlatt himself.)

(A boy drowns in a flood. A boy spins the wheels of fate and watches the meteors destroy his homeland. A boy, encased in lava, tries to drown out his friend’s ghost. A boy is Tommy, Tubbo, Quackity, Dream, Techno, Wilbur, Schlatt. A boy is a weapon and they are the bombs.)

“Hey, Tubbs,” Schlatt says. His voice is rougher than he’d like to admit. His head is pounding. “How’s life treatin’ ya, kid?”

“It’s alright,” Tubbo tells him, avoiding looking him in the eyes. “What happened to your horns?”

Wilbur probably sent him to ask. To interrogate. He admits it hurts; he had trusted Tubbo, had let himself grow attached to the kid, and now he was just another one of Wilbur’s tools against him. But there’s just something about Tubbo’s face that makes Schlatt’s walls crack just a little. 

“The White House collapsed on top of us,” he tells him. “And I gave Big Q my last potion. Not that it would’ve helped with these.”

“Oh,” Tubbo says. “Do you know where—“

“I wouldn’t tell you that. Not that I don’t _trust you,_ kid, but… I don’t.”

Not that he knows where he went. Not that he knows if he’s safe. If he’s _alive._

“I’m guessing Wilbur’s taking power,” he states. Tubbo nods, but it’s nothing Schlatt wasn’t expecting already. Another entirely different question, now, is one Schlatt doesn’t really want to ask - but he has to. “How many people…?”

The boy stares at the floor. “A lot,” he whispers. “We haven’t found Fundy yet. And— they’re burning the bodies.”

Schlatt breathes in the smoke and wants to vomit. “Okay,” he chokes out. “Thank you for telling me.”

It occurs to Schlatt, as Tubbo hurries away, that it just might’ve been the first time in a long, long while that the boy’s been thanked for anything. 

(He dreams of Tubbo. A boy is a weapon; a boy is a friend turned enemy. Tubbo holds Technoblade’s crossbow in his hands, shoots it at Schlatt’s shoulder before running away with priceless information, and Schlatt bleeds out, crawling towards his office’s exit, and it’s hours before Quackity even notices anything happened.)

He wakes dehydrated, starved, and feeling like his body is going to explode. All those things aren’t exactly new. What is new (in this context, at least) is the boot over his chest, squeezing down, sending him crying out in alarm and pain. 

“Good morning, Schlatt.” The voice is one he could recognize anywhere, even when the ringing in his ears hasn’t stopped (in fact, it’s becoming deafening; he figures it won’t matter soon, anyway). He doesn’t need to look at Wilbur to know the way his words work. 

They were like brothers, once.

The boot presses down harder. “Stop,” he gasps out. The pain remains for one, two, three, four seconds, before Wilbur finally releases him. Schlatt curls up onto himself, coughing uncontrollably for a few neverending moments. 

“You overdid it,” hisses Tommy from outside the cell. To be completely honest Schlatt hadn’t even noticed him standing there. 

Tommy’s a good kid. Tommy has his hand on the hilt of his sword. Tommy had spared their citizens. 

The boot is back, but the pressure is light enough for it to just be a little uncomfortable. “Tell me where Quackity is,” he demands. At Schlatt’s silence, the boot goes down deeper. 

(A boy is a weapon. A boy is a boy. A boy crushes his chest with a boot, crusted with blood, mud, ash and dust. A boy smiles as he hurts him.)

“I’m not telling you shit,” he groans. “I ain’t a fuckin’ bootlicker.”

Wilbur releases his torso only to send a steel-toed kick flying across his face, a direct impact against his broken horn and bruised cheekbone. Pain jerks through his entire body, and he screams. 

“Wilbur, stop it!,” Tommy shouts. 

(They were boys, once. They were brothers, once, swimming through floods and skipping over fiery destruction. Together, always together.)

“You couldn’t just make this easy for you,” Wilbur seethes at him. Another kick follows. “You couldn’t just admit you _lost!_ ”

“Wilbur!”

Schlatt laughs. It’s a wet, pained thing, but he laughs. The Emperor is here. The Businessman is here. If Wilbur wants a villain, cornered and pathetic, he’ll have one; hopefully he’ll forget about Quackity for long enough if he’s distracted with Schlatt. 

“I sent him away,” he tells him, as confidently as he can. “No one will ever find him again.”

Another kick. He swears something in his chest snaps. It doesn’t matter. Wilbur is vicious today; he wonders what will come after this, if he will survive it. (He hopes not.)

(He wonders if Quackity is still alive. Maybe this is all just some wild mind games on Wilbur’s part. Maybe his partner is already—)

“That’s fucking enough,” Tommy says again, after an eternity of agony. He’s dragging Wilbur out of the cell. Schlatt doesn’t even watch them leave; he doesn’t stop laughing until he hacks up blood. 

(They come and go all the time. They abandon you. They take everything from you. And you take everything from them.)

(He still remembers Wilbur’s squid song. He wonders why the man doesn’t play anymore. He wonders, what did he do to him to make him like this?)

(The boy he knew, the boy with the Whale Facts and the warm sweaters, wouldn’t have done any of this.)

(A boy is a weapon. A boy is a semiautomatic rifle. A boy is TNT dropped from flying machines.)

(Schlatt has a nightmare: he digs out Quackity’s body from underneath the rubble of the White House. Their last discussion about the fate of the building had, in turn, sealed the Vice President’s own death. Now Schlatt wishes they’d never fought at all. He clutches his dusted corpse and his own hands are raw and he’s disoriented and still slightly drunk and in agony but Quackity is _dead_ and he never got to say sorry.)

He wakes up to Technoblade, shoving a loaf of stale bread towards him. “Eat,” he says. He barely hears the order to begin with. 

Schlatt doesn’t move. Everything hurts so much. He’s so tired. His head won’t stop spinning. Techno insists, splitting the bread into smaller chunks, and he raises a shivering hand to reach for it. 

It tastes flat, and it’s old enough to be almost rock-solid, but it’s edible. 

“Thank you,” he forces out. His voice is almost gone. He knows, at this point, they’re just trying to keep him alive a little longer, for whatever purposes. 

Technoblade shrugs. “No problem.”

(A man in a cape and crown hunts down dozens of people in an abandoned city. Talented or not, skilled or not, they all fall to the Blade’s hands. A boy is a sword. A boy is a trident. A boy is an explosive.)

(Quackity had been so scared of him. Schlatt never understood why.)

“Do you,” he starts. His words dry out, lost momentarily to the haze in his brain. Then they come back and he tries again; if he stops trying he might never know before they send him to the gallows. “Alex? Did you find him?”

Techno ponders at this, as if considering whether or not to give him the answer he wants or the one he needs. But eventually he leans against the wall, offers him more bread, and says, “nope.”

And Schlatt is so relieved he even eats some more. 

“Listen, Schlatt,” Techno says, after a while. “It wasn’t personal. War is war.”

 _Not to you,_ he thinks. _War is always personal to everyone else._ “I guess.”

“You’re not a bad man. But Wil and Tommy—“

“I get it,” Schlatt says. “They’re family. I get it.”

(He did. He’d waged war for his family, too. He’d died for them, too.)

(He’s watching the meteors fall. Ted is laughing his ass off while Connor and Cooper scream.)

“They’re my brothers,” Techno finishes, hands him the rest of the bread. “If you tell them I said that I actually will kill you.”

He can’t help but smile a little at that. “Lips are sealed,” Schlatt says. 

Wilbur shoves him against the crumbling walls, harshly, and shouts, “where _is_ he?!”

Schlatt is dizzy. The world spins around him. Everything hurts. Everything _always_ hurts. “What?,” he mumbles. He’s already told them, he doesn’t _know_ where Quackity is, and even if he knew—

“Don’t play dumb.” Wil’s fingers lock themselves around his throat. “Dream’s _gone._ What did you tell him? Where is he?”

“I— _what?_ ”

“This was your last mistake, big man,” the man hisses. Schlatt goes very still; damn these ram instincts. “Everyone will see it happen. Public execution, I’m thinking.”

_Ah._

“About time you brought it up,” Schlatt gasps. His own fingers reach for Wilbur’s, trying to pry them off of his neck, where the pressure is starting to suffocate him. “Anything in— mind, loverboy?”

Wilbur squeezes harder. “I was thinking, maybe a water tank,” he says. “For the good ol’ days.”

(The land is flooding. He is stuck inside his little hut. The AC is long broken. Soon, he will suffocate. His only salvation, he knows, is swimming to the surface, where his friend awaits. This time, he will succeed. 

The nightmares won’t ever stop coming.)

“Go ahead,” he replies, like his heart isn’t beating in his throat at the mere _prospect_ of drowning. “Give everyone a real show.”

Wil snarls and drops him to the ground. “You’re fucking....” He misses that last word, but Wilbur’s so mad he can read his lips and tell: _insufferable._

Everything hurts. _Everything hurts._ He can barely hear Wilbur now. He can’t breathe. He feels his boot and he feels the pain and fuck, fuck, fuck, his fucking brain won’t shut up.

“And you’re literally insane but you don’t hear _me_ complainin’, Soot.”

Wilbur leaves as suddenly as he’d appeared, then, storming off and barking orders, and Schlatt is thankfully left alone for at least a little while. 

And then Tommy shows up by his little dirt hole, and he looks— he looks—

Schlatt, for once, can’t decipher Tommy. Under the faint torchlight, Schlatt can barely see his bruises, the war scars from before he’d even arrived in Manburg. He’s a boy. A boy is a weapon. 

(He’s just a kid.)

“What?,” he asks him. He’s so tired. So exhausted of everything. His neck hurts. Everything hurts. “What do you want?”

But Tommy doesn’t say anything. And when he leaves, Schlatt hasn’t understood his intentions at all. 

(He dreams of Travis, for some reason.

“Knock knock,” the boy is saying. They stand together by a tree. 

“Who is it?,” comes a muffled response. 

Travis looks at him. “ _Who_ is it?”

“Tell him— tell him it’s the tax people,” Schlatt says. 

“The taxes!,” Travis echoes. His dog ears twitch in anticipation. 

“You can’t come in,” comes a muffled response. 

Travis looks at him. 

“Tell him we’re gonna fuckin' kill his entire family if he doesn’t let us in.”

Travis seems to ponder at this. Schlatt can’t decipher him; his friend is a mystery that continues to elude him. 

And then, Travis chirps, “we haves cookie!”

Schlatt wakes up in agony, but at least he doesn’t wake up screaming.)

Schlatt is on his knees but doesn’t look down. Before him, the entire country watches, or those who are left, anyway; he doubts any of them feel nothing but exhaustion, at best. He doesn’t look down, no. He looks on ahead at his people, if only trembling slightly. Chin up, eyes determined. Tonight he is the Emperor; tonight, he dies a Caesar.

Wilbur’s giving his victory speech, now. The air’s cold, and a bit cleaner, but he still catches whiffs of smoke and tries to steel himself. It’s alright, though. He feels at peace with this outcome, or maybe it’s just the numbing headache he’s feeling, or the ringing in his ears that refuses to fade. He’s too tired to care. It’s all finally fucking over, and nothing can change the outcome, not now. 

(Quackity, wherever he is, is hopefully doing okay.)

(A boy isn’t always a weapon.)

Technoblade stands behind him. He doesn’t turn to look at him, but he knows his axe is sharp; he knows what awaits him. He’s dragged to his feet with minimal complaints; between his hearing loss and the weight unbalance he stumbles just a bit, having been sitting or crouching for a few days now, but a tight grip on his hands, tied behind his back, keep him from falling over the edge of the podium altogether. He can’t help but let out a small laugh. He’s so tired of this pointless spectacle.

He doesn’t hear what Wilbur says to him over the ringing that’s become deafening; he doesn’t think he can, and he doesn’t care about anything the man has to say anymore. “Let’s just get this over it,” he rasps out instead, apparently interrupting the new President. He wonders, as they place him center of the stage, who’s the one that’s gonna pull the trigger. He doesn’t think Wilbur has the guts to do it, even with all the shit he put him through lately, but then again, the boy who had laughed at his half-jokes and sung songs about squids a lifetime ago wouldn’t have forced his own country into war just because he lost a dumb election.

(He thinks about Quackity’s broken wing. He thinks about Tommy’s bruises and scars. He thinks about the burning bodies.)

The sky above them glows golden as the sun sets. Below them, his people watch him in silence.

(Maybe they’re not silent; maybe he just can’t hear them anymore.)

Tommy’s saying something now. He doesn’t know when he showed up; he didn’t hear him appear, but he’s down there, mingled alongside the masses, and he looks _so determined_. He’s holding Techno’s netherite sword (Schlatt would recognize the cursed blade anywhere) and his eyes shine with righteous anger. Schlatt glances at Wilbur and sees not the faintest hint of regret. 

“Tommy Innit,” Wilbur shouts, and it finally registers in Schlatt’s brain, “you’re fucking delusional.”

_What?_

He thinks Tommy might be shouting too. The kid’s always been way too loud, but now he can barely hear his words. He thinks that should be concerning, but all Schlatt says is, “I can’t hear anything.” And Tommy just grows angrier at Wilbur. What is going on? He thinks he hears a _how dare you,_ and the boy draws his weapon and he _is_ the weapon, the cannon fodder, always has been, and Schlatt wants to laugh so bad, and then he realizes he’s pointing the blade at Wilbur, and Schlatt’s bindings fall from his wrists as Techno releases him. 

_What?_

“Party’s over,” a voice deadpans, echoing all over the world. More importantly, another screams:

“ _Schlatt!_ ”

At the end of Manberg’s plaza stand two outsiders. One is unmistakably Dream, with his flagship green outfit and the white mask immaculate. Next to him a man (a boy) looks straight into Schlatt’s eyes with fury and drive. His wings, yellow like a dandelion, are clean now, tucked underneath his cape. And he holds in his hands a bow and arrow. 

He doesn’t hear what Wilbur snarls over the microphone. He doesn’t hear the crowd revolt as Techno runs, grabbing him by the wrist. He doesn’t see anything but his Vice, running towards him. 

And they crash into each other, tidal waves returning. 

(“When there’s a will,” Schlatt speaks into the open mic. He is staring directly at that one guy, what’s his name, Wilbur, right. And Wilbur looks like a deer caught in headlights, shock quickly fading into uncontrollable laughter.)

A friend is a weapon. A friend is falling asleep safely nestled between your Vice’s wings as you all ride away from the city, to a place where you can regroup and save whoever’s left. A friend is Niki, fixing up your bruises and injuries and giving you potions that actually help your pain. A friend is Fundy, staying awake through the night just in case someone has followed. A friend is Tommy, and Techno, as the latter pulls out an arrow from the former’s shoulder and they swear they don’t regret it. A friend is Tubbo, his crossbow aimed at Wilbur as they run, _run._

A friend is… 

(They stay awake until dawn. They watch the sun rise from just outside their tent. They watch the stars fade away. Quackity holds a guitar; he stole it from Wilbur’s camp, he tells him with a giggle.

“Wrote you a song while I was gone,” he says. “Don’t make fun of it.”

“Only if it’s too bad, Big Q.”

“Alright, Big Man.” He gives the strings a tentative strum, pats the frets with his left hand and clears his throat. “Here goes nothing.”

Schlatt waits, expectantly. His horn is starting to heal. His bruises are fading. His ribs, a little less broken. But Quackity starts to sing, and Schlatt smiles. 

“ _Nobody ever had a dream 'round here,_ ” The song grows in confidence. “ _But I don't really mind that it's starting to get to me._ ”

“You did _not_ write that,” Schlatt interrupts. 

“Shut up, man, of course I did. _Nobody ever pulls the seams 'round here_ ,” he continues, and strums his guitar extra loudly for emphasis, “ _But I don't really mind that it's starting to get to me._ ”

Schlatt laughs. He can barely hear the song, but he _can._ And he laughs.)

A friend is a place where one can go. Whether it’s a spiritual home —

(He leans against Quackity’s shoulder as he plays. His whole body hurts, but not as badly as yesterday.)

— or a physical home —

(The cuck shed still stands strong, a stone monolith against time. Beyond it, at the top of the hill, his house has become overgrown, but it’s still there, amongst the flowers. His little entourage stops behind him, feeling his hesitation, and then he moves forward and starts climbing up the steps.)

— or a place where things are better. 

(The sun rises. Schlatt sings along to Quackity’s song. Around them, their little group of survivors sleep tight. Far away, they see the flames of the war.)

Schlatt closes his eyes, wrapped in Quackity’s embrace, and sighs as the other man gives up with the guitar. 

“ _But have you ever seen the lights,_ ” Alex sings, “ _I’ve seen ‘em! Have you ever seen the lights…_ ”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading uwu 46th prez of the us of a lets fuckign go


End file.
